Laminate floor lifting, bubbling or peaking in your West Bromwich home? The usual causes, what you can check, and when boards can be relaid rather than replaced.
Lift a piece of beading or check under the skirting. If the boards are tight against the wall with no gap, that is very likely the cause.
Look around the washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, sink and radiator pipes. Lifting that started near one of them usually points to a slow leak.
Boards trapped under door frames, kitchen units or heavy furniture cannot move, so the floor rises somewhere else instead.
Swollen, puffy board edges mean water damage. A clean ridge with flat boards either side usually means the floor has nowhere to expand.
A couple of photos of the lifted area and one of the edge by the skirting tells us most of what we need before we visit.
If it lifted because it had no expansion gap, it can often be relaid once the gap is made. If the boards have swollen from water, they will not go back flat and need replacing.
Often not. Damaged boards can usually be replaced on their own, as long as matching boards can be found. Keeping a few spare boards from the original fit really helps.
That is a classic sign of a missing or too-small expansion gap. The floor grows in humid weather and has nowhere to go.
If there is a leak, sort the leak first, then the floor. If it is getting worse or becoming a trip hazard, it is worth having it looked at sooner rather than later.
Laminate that lifts, bubbles or rises into a ridge between boards is almost always trying to tell you one of two things: it has nowhere to expand, or it has taken on moisture. Laminate moves with the seasons. It grows slightly in damp weather and shrinks in dry, heated rooms, so it needs a small gap all the way round the edge, hidden under the skirting or beading. When that gap is missing, the boards push against the walls and have nowhere to go but up.
Moisture is the other common cause. A leaking washing machine, a dishwasher seal, a pet bowl or even a mopped floor left wet can swell the edges of the boards, and once the core swells it rarely goes back down. In West Bromwich we see a lot of lifting in kitchens and hallways, and in the 1930s semis around Hateley Heath and Charlemont where solid floors were laid without a proper damp proof layer underneath.
The good news is that lifting caused by a missing expansion gap can often be fixed by taking up and relaying the boards with the right gap. Boards that have swollen from water usually need replacing, but often only the damaged section, not the whole room.
Send a photo or a quick video of the room on WhatsApp and we'll see if we can quote you over the phone, or fill in the form and it opens your email ready to send.
